Blog of Jesse Magnan. That would make it my blog, where I post reviews, share stories and utter out loud the occasional thought that I probably should have kept to myself.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Food

I have a long and tense history with food. As a teenager I
never really watch what I ate, nor did I care.As a result I have what has become a staple of the average American male.
Man boobs, and a gut. Over five years ago I decided to make a change. I decided
to start exercising more and to become and more and more aware of what I ate.

All was going well. I started losing weight, but then I
started losing a lot of weight quickly, and sleeping a lot, and nearly unable
to walk as horrible pain shut up and down my back.

My attempt to get healthy coincided rather nicely with
contracting cancer. But not just any cancer, I contracted multiple
myeloma. It is the second most
common blood cancer among those who are over fifty. I was 27.

To cut what could be a rather long and sad story for another
time short, The cancer paralyzed me. I went kind of nuts again with food after
that, but the complications of being paralyzed did hinder me from doing what
would be necessary to balloon up. I only gained back twenty five pounds I had
lost. Though I am not sure how much of that weight loss was from diet and
exercise or from the cancer slowly eating away at my body.

But after some time being sad, and angry, going through the
many steps it takes to come to terms with being disabled I have decided to once
more to try and get in shape. It is something I have always wanted, may never
have the six pack but making my life a little easier is always a good thing.

And therein lays a disheartening truth. Becoming healthy is
expensive.

It is nearly impossible to avoid processed foods when you
have a very limited budget to shop with. The cheapest foods are inevitably the
least healthy of odds. I could eat McDonald's three times a day and not spend
more than four dollars total.

Then there is the near heroine like addiction I have developed for some of
these bad foods. Not the shakes, but you dream about it, get irritable when you
want it but try not to have it.

My biggest addiction is soda.Hundreds if not thousands of calories, chock
full of chemicals. The only natural ingredient in soda is water and that water is
carbonated.

Looking at all these chemicals leaves me with that aching
question, are all of these different chemicals the cause of my multiple
myeloma?

While the research I have
seen has yet to pin down a single cause, could it be that all these chemicals
that I have pumped myself full of over the years has activated the propensity
for the disease hidden in my DNA?

I may never know. All I can do is do my best to earn a
little more and try to eat a variety of foods even if it is canned fruit, and frozen
meat and vegetables.I think that is all
anyone can do. DO your best with the
budget you have, and when you can afford to eat healthier, then eat healthier.

About Me

Getting older means having survived another year on a planet that is trying to kill us, in a solar system that is a shooting gallery within a galaxy that has a black hole in the center in a universe that isn't even aware of our existence.